According to Dongbu, of Seoul, S. Korea, BYD expects to ship its substantial quantities of 2-megapixel CMOS image sensors to major Chinese smartphone manufacturers, including Huawei.

According to Jae Song, executive vice president of marketing at Dongbu, in addition to building BYD's 2-megapixel image sensors, Dongbu is also supporting the company's development of 5-megapixed CMOS image sensors.

"We expect our relationship to blossom further into the development and manufacture of 8M CIS chips," said Song.

Dongbu announced in May that it would sharpen its focus on serving Chinese customers by establishing offices in Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen. The firm said it is already manufacturing a wide range of chips for Chinese customers, including touch-screen controllers, ambient light proximity sensors, and power management chips as well as the CMOS image sensors.

Yeah, I wouldn't put this in the category of interlocking ownership. This seems like a straight foundry deal -- Dongbu is going to build more image sensors for BYD on a foundry basis. But note that Dongbu is very eager to do business with more Chinese companies. And with good reason.

The Japanese kiretsu can be seen as outgrowths of the previous Zaibatsu groupings, and the Korean Chaebols are similar.

It's not clear from the EETimes piece that what is happening is interlocking ownership. This is simply a Chinese manufacturer attempting to serve the growing Chinese internal market, and seeking ways to get closer to it's customers.

Heading in that direction with the Chinese would not surprise me. The question is whether we would even notice. For all we know, it already exists. One of the issues with doing business in China is transparency, and ownership is one of those things that can be hard to pin down.

This reminds me a bit of the early 80s when some Japanese chipmakers started forming keiretsu with other companies. Do you think we're heading in that direction with the Chinese? What would be the impact on the chip industry if that were so?